We're back with another edition of The Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Emily Dashinsky,
culture editor here at the Federalist. As always, you can email the show
at radio at the Federalist dot com, follow us on exit fdr LST,
make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcasts, and of course to the
premium version of our website as well. I'm joined today by wan Da vid
Rojas, who is a columnist for Compact covering the Iberian Peninsula and Latin America.
He's such a fascinating writer, and as I just learned before we started
taping, it, has a fascinating background. So first of all, welcome
to the show. Thanks for having me on, Hemley, Yeah, of
course. Now, I usually ask people when it's their first time to give
us a little bit of background on their career and all of that. But
as I just mentioned, I've learned in the past like five minutes that your
background is exceptionally interesting given what you cover for Compact. I'll just stay right
up here at the top. I think Latin America is a huge blind spot
for conservative media, for American media right at our doorstep. We were talking
earlier about how even the sort of nationalist right has a lot of reasons to
dive deeply into the daily news in Latin America, not just because of what
nationalism surging nationalism looks like in other countries, but also because of how it
affects our own country. And the border is one part of a massive puzzle.
So just start by telling us a little bit about your background. You've
had experiences that are exceptionally relevant that give you way more insight and perspective than
most people have, and from your master's thesis to work that you've done with
nonprofits. So tell us a little bit about that. Okay, let's see
where to begin. Mayo beginning Columbia. Well, I am Columbian. I'm
Columbian American. I was born in Bowata, but my parents came to South
Florida. I grew up in South Florida since yeah, I was three four
years old to really raised here in the US in Broward County, so not
quite in Miami, closer to Fort Lauderdom. A lot of Colombians around here.
And yeah, I still live here in a plantation which is a kind
of a suburb of Fort Lauderdom. But I'll start actually ideologically, I guess
historically my parents and myself. Yeah, he came from a more like leftist
background. We're kind of yeah, center left, generally supporting Democrats over time.
What's funny is that I like to say that going to university, I
went to the University of Florida moved me more to the right or to the
center, depending on the issues. I like to say that I'm more centrist,
yeah, even right wing on social issues that have evolved on different things
over time. So in any economics, I like to say that I'm more
populist or left of center, which is good because that's kind of the line
of combat, right. So yeah, and I I'm twenty eight So I
went to UF in my bachelor's between twenty fourteen and twenty eighteen. So this
was like the hallmark of the Great Wokening. And yeah, just a lot
of things really turned me off, you know, the twenty sixteen twenty twenty
elections. Trump coming on the scene. I was never a huge fan of
Trump, but he did, and you know, like all of us make
us reevaluate a lot of key things, and you just notice things like wait
a minute, what the hell, Like this guy's a protectionist, Like this
is the physician of Democrats not so long ago, and like what's going on
here stuff like that. But let's see. After I completed my bachelor's in
political science and I did a lot of work on Latin America involved in the
Center for Latin American Studies at UF, I went on to work in Maniji,
Columbia with a professor of mine. There she was doing a study on
community policing in the city and I was a resident the term was resident assistant.
So it was a really good job out to me like normal people of
all walks of life in the city, as well as police officers, a
profession I really come to respect because of that job. Did that for like
a year and a half two years, went back and did my masters in
Latin American Studies at UF and after graduating there, yes, started writing for
different publications, a lot of them. Yeah on the right. My first
piece I wrote for The American Conservative, which I've always liked for a long
time because of its realists and tradition and opposition to the Iraq War and yeah,
that's kind of nationalist, protective, protectionist perspective. And eventually started writing
for American Affairs publication. I really respected behind me, uh, and that
actually through them, So Rob ended up quoting me quoting a peace of mind
in American affairs on Mexico, and the rest is kind of history. Ended
up becoming a columnist at Compact last year and writing extensively on Latin America all
sorts of subjects, elections, energy, industrial policy, stuff like that.
Yeah, go ahead, go ahead, Yeah. But the last thing is
that through that, up until the beginning of last year, I also worked
in immigration, actually as a social worker with what are called UCS unaccompanied children.
Those are kids who come here without parents or guardians and so then are
released to what are called sponsors. Most of the time they're family members,
but a lot of times they can be strangers that just agree to take them
in. And so the job of the social worker would be to just make
sure that they're enrolled in school because by a law Florida, for instance,
you have to be in school until age sixteen. And you know that they
have a roof over their heads, are not being traffic which is a huge
problem with the UCS, and yeah, they have food, running water,
electricity, stuff like that. You teach them how to monitor their core cases
with their a number I'm sure you know a lot about this, and really
seeing how our immigration system works or doesn't work as also, Yeah, kind
of colored my perspective on the subject. I've become much more of a border
hawk. The funny thing is that I actually never had two strong opinions on
immigration. It was kind of you know, and didn't really go too much
one way or the other. As an immigrant. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
I mean, you know, I didn't really think that illegal immigration was
great. Also kind of understood where some of the migrants were coming from.
And yeah, definitely that's still the case based on work and immigration. But
just what's happening now, and we were talking about this earlier, the way
our asylum system just is completely insane. It's come to a breaking point.
We have to do something about this, and we can go on a bit
more at length. Yeah, no, I mean it's interesting again, as
somebody with experience, who say a lot of people myself included, you know,
I've been to Mexico and everything, but it's there's a lot of people,
especially I think on the left, who haven't done the reading on this
and certainly don't actually understand the nuances when you kind of peel back the layers.
You realize that what you're supporting when you support an open border, the
facto open border is mass human trafficking, industrial scale human trafficking. And your
experience, I'm curious about this as a social worker, actually was at a
time when people were children were being hired at these meat processing plants and factories
around the country. The New York Times ended up doing a big expose a
on it piece. Actually yeah, but it's been basically the only piece of
major reporting so Rob has covered this pretty well, but one of the only
major pieces of reporting on something that is a vast apparatus running the country and
in some respect through a manufacturing sector. I guess I'm just curious, you
know how watching that and watching media coverage of that, know how informed do
you think the average American is on what's actually happening? Not at all.
I mean, everyone's just in their part of some and echo chambers. It's
really hard to get to the bottom. I mean something I've noticed. This
might be conspiratorial to say, but when I try to research a lot of
these issues, finding good data, it's incredible. Recent data is a lot
harder to come by. It's a lot harder to analyze and really bad at
it too. I mean they intentionally are not releasing a lot of these numbers.
Yeah, that's my opinion as well. You look up you know,
let's a like border criss crossings, and some of the first results will be
results from years ago. It's it's a you you have to go to homeland
securities like actual pages and kind of parts of the data month to month.
It's it's it's really infuriating. And I mean, you know, like Democrats
will get upset that, you know, Republicans will toss around terms like open
borders. I mean, sure, it's not completely open in the sense that
you can entirely you know, there's some procedure to an extent, but in
practice they decriminalize border crossings. I mean, yeah, you have to use
a little app and whatever. But I mean it's not an exaggeration, like
we can quibble over semantics. But and and another thing too, is that
it's true and you see this all over the world. This is a point
I've made after the pandemic, obviously, you know, immigration all over the
world went down to zero. It was going to go up no matter what.
And Europe has seen a huge migration wave as well. But the current
policy of parole and just you know, anyone who comes here is automatically eligible
for asylum is completely insane. Obviously, it's an incentive for people to come
here. The Biden administration just poured kerosene on an already expanding fire. How
dare you suggest that the anything to do with it? And of course I
don't know if this is the case for you. You talk to migrants and
some of them will in fact say Biden dragged us up here, and they
won't say it like that, but that the Biden administrations and the anticipation of
the Biden administration's policies were a pull factor. Yeah. So I'm actually,
we have an election coming up in Mexico and you've covered for Compact AMLO and
the his party is going to stay in power, and it's basically a a
certain certitude at this point. Via Claudia Shinebaumb and Trump had a very different
relationship with OMLA than Biden did. Just from the perspective of somebody in the
US, how do you think the shinebaumb administration with the combination potentially of a
Trump administration, what would negotiations Because there's something very personal about Trump's relationship with
Omlo, that they kind of had that populist personal connection. Claudia Steinbaum is
a rather very character. Yeah, tell us about this, tell us about
this. Yeah. So it's funny because and I listened to the podcast you
did with Jpu Desmin, who's a friend of mine, and he's really in
the know with a lot of you know, right wingers in Latin America,
A lot of them, like Milay or Bouquetle have this incredible outreach, especially
online, but not just online, with conservatives in the US and all over
the world, in Spain and other Latin American countries. Uh, Omlo,
I mean, he's a really old school politician, and he's old, he's
like seventy seventy one. The guy's outreach is horrendous, not even just on
the right, but on the left. You think that he would milk this
good relationship with Trump for something, but the press that he gets and conservative
media is horrendous, so much so that a lot of conservatives don't know that
these guys were and still are friends. Tom Loo is the only leftist leader
in Latin America that on the daily and his daily press conference is criticized as
the law fair WHI it's against Donald Trump, And you know, it's complicated.
Mexico and the US have fundamentally different interests when it comes to different things.
We can go into that, but as far as Shane Baum is concerned,
she you know, she's an academic and has a long leftist history.
Was she protested in the nineteen sixty eight of protests with her parents, or
maybe she's not that older, it was just her parents, But in any
case, she's has a long history involved with student movements, studied here in
the United States. She was the mayor of Mexico City. To be fair,
Amla was also previously mayor of Mexico City between two thousand and two thousand
and five. But they have very different profiles, almost kind of a machine
politician. And he's from the country south, more rural and frankly conservative at
least socially conservative area of the state of Gospel, very oil rich state as
well. Shanebaum is from the Capital and she's much more progressive in the conventional
sense. So yeah, she was a champion of LGBT issues in the Capital.
She served on like a UN panel on climate she was going to ask
she's kind of she's you in like World Economic Forum, kind of Davos adjacent
in the way, but I wouldn't necessarily say a World Economic Forum. She
I think that it will be. We won't really know until she comes into
office. There's a lot of institutional momentum from her party and coming from AMLO
in the left and in Latin America in Mexico there could keep her on the
right track, but it's an open question. The other the other thing is
we'll have to see exactly how influential AMLO will continue to be once he's left
office. But yeah, yeah, I think it's a mixed bag as far
as what relations with the US could be. She's kind of just towed the
party line, and in general, that's my sense. A lot of what
she says is just kind of to please the boss. So she said that
she doesn't care if it's Biden or Trump, She's going to look to have
good relations. Who knows. On the other hand, and I tweeted about
this, I thought this was a very promising development. Ramon de la Fuente,
who was I think Mexico's ambassador to the UN and is rumored to be
a strong candidate for Foreign Minister Secretary of State in Mexico. He actually openly
came out and criticized US asylum policy, saying that it was a huge impediment
to reducing border crossings. That anyone who just crosses the border into the US
is automatically eligible for asylum. That to me is a good sign of practicism.
Hopefully we'll see some of that. I don't know, yes, it'll
remain to be seen. Maybe some of just the Yeah, having people from
AMLO's administration could really help with a Trump turn. How much does it cost
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Chris Markowski on Apple Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts, and even just
focusing on the economics, because I want to move you to take a little
tour of Latin America at some point here. Because you've written so well on
the dr You've written on Colombia, I think you've written on Ecuador, You've
weighed in on this, but the economics of Mexico under Omlo are a really
really important piece of this puzzle and understanding who's empower in Mexico, why they're
in power in Mexico, and could you tell us just a little bit about
how he's how the Mexican people. You wrote about this in compact, it
was a great piece how the Mexican people see Omlow And you know, certainly
Shrine bumb will be expected to continue a whole lot of those policies. He
Amo was one of the most popular democratic leaders in the world. By some
accounts. He has an approval rating between sixty and seventy percent. It's funny
because you look at his electoral base, who supports him. I mean,
in Mexico, he's a lot more popular overall than Trump is in the United
States, but the profile of voters is similar. He's popular with the working
class, with rural voters. Actually, he's popular with the elderly, which
is very strange for a leftists. I guess it helps that he comes from
a rural background and is older himself. But really the like Trump, he's
a protectionist and they both renegotiated the NAFTA end of the USMCA. That was
actually purportedly one of the their first interactions together where they really got along and
saw a lot of points of agreements. Although hated n aft was a decades
long critic of the trade agreement. But his popularity really comes from bread and
butter issues. He's a huge champion of labor. A lot of critics and
international and domestic media will say, oh, it's just because of the welfare.
Yeah, he has expanded welfare. Interestingly, though he's generally been a
deficit hawk as well, and public spending overall has not gone up that much
under his term, but it's been more concentrated in specific areas. Investment in
the infrastructure. He has all these huge projects such as an oil refinery in
his home state and the train Yeah. Yeah, and yeah, he's a
big on energy sovereignty, loves oil. He comes from one of Mexico's chief
oil producing states of But the key thing is that, and I mentioned this
in my piece from this week on the Dominican Republic. He's made raising the
minimum wage by huge increments, like twenty eight to twenty five percent every year
a staple of his administration. And so the purchasing power of Mexicans has gone
up exponentially. Average wages have gone up like one hundred percent. In contrary
to you know we'll hear from economists, it hasn't led to either increased unemployment
or higher inflation. Inflation is about the same today in Mexico as it was
when he took office, even with the pandemic. And why do you think
that is? Has he been savvy about attracting businesses as an industrial policy.
I'm sure some of our listeners will disagree with diagnoses on either side, But
from your perspective uncovering this, what have you seen? You know a lot
of it is, some of it has nothing to do with him, And
a lot of critics will say that, oh, you know, Mexico near
shore and it's manufacturing boom and booming in spite of omload, not because of
him. That's partially true. I mean, I think whoever it would have
been in office, the would be a near shoring boom. Because of these
rising geopolitical tensions with China, we've seen a lot of trade redirected to Vietnam
and other countries that d are. Actually that said, for a leftist,
he's been very very responsible with the country's finances. You look at Mexico compared
to even right That was an amazing sentence, by the way. Yeah,
yeah, for a leftist. Well, I mean, to be fair,
in Latin America, there are a lot of fairly responsible leftists with economics in
Chile and in other countries, but there are really the cartoonish ones like in
Argentina and then Venezuela and Nicaragua, et cetera. But even relative to conservative
countries like Brazil under Bolsonaro, the OMLO has been very very frugal overall during
this term. There's more spending now in twenty twenty four because of the election,
but it's an interesting little data point on him. Yeah, and that's
on that note. Well, actually, I want to stay there for one
second just to say to ask I'm curious as to how from people I've heard
Mexico experts, some of them will say that, you know, for Amlo,
immigration up through Mexico is sort of a second tier priority. He has
the economic priorities of his own people, He has the security of his own
people, energy policies, all of that kind of on front and center on
his radar, and you know, what's happening at his border with the United
States is really not the top concern. What's interesting to that about that to
me is that you know, you also talk to people who have covered what
Todd Bensman is coined, the super Highway up through the Latin America in Mexico,
and some people will say, you know, David Agrin is really good
example of this journal space in Mexico City that there's an economy built up around
the super highway. They are there are fruit stands, NGOs. So how
does that factor into even just having labor around, you know, being paid
in cash around Matamoras or whatever, how does that or migrant camps around,
not camps, but migrants in the South that are coming and maybe have to
stay in waite or with remain in Mexico. You had a lot of people
remaining in Mexico. How does that factor into the challenge of the economy for
Omlo and his party. There's a lot of levels to this, and you
see this actually in other Latin American countries as well. What are the incentives
for Mexico here, And that's kind of the one of the central points so
that peace I wrote for Compact in March. I think I think it's called
the onload Trump BroMans. From Mexico's perspective, you know, what's the easiest
solution to the migration problem with the US? Do nothing? These are a
bunch of foreigners, mostly foreigners. There are Mexicans across the border obviously,
although a lot of them returned. You know, they live in border communities.
But you know, normal Mexicans resent. Hey, you know the US
is controlling us to stop all these migrants from other countries from entering their country.
Hey, we're you know, we're a poor country. We have other
needs. This isn't our problem, it is their problem. But on the
other hand, Mexico actually does have a lot more interest in stopping migrants at
their southern border. Why as migrants work their way up to the United States,
and not all of them do, they do compete with native workers in
Mexico, and that creates a lot of resentment. Anti immigration sentiment in Mexico,
as in other Latin American countries, if you look at Poles, has
gone up immensely. There are polls that show that sixty plus percent of Mexicans
do not want more Central Americans or Haitians entering their country. Why is that
Why? Yeah, I mean a lot of them, especially Venezuelans, because
Haitians are less likely to be higher because of language barriers and stuff like that.
But a lot of them. I lived in Brazil and in other Latin
American countries they might speak Spanish. Yeah, they'll suppress ways competing with native
workers. This just makes a lot of sense under Ali. Actually, Mexico
and this set had a lot to do with the back and forth with the
Trump administration. The Mexico agreed to accept a lot more of permanent foreign residents
from Central America and other countries Venezuela, like Cuba, thelike. That wasn't
the case for decades. Mexico actually had one of the most restrictive immigration policies
in the world. Up until recent there were more people from Spain and Mexico.
Permanent residents from Spain than from Honduras up until I think, yeah,
like twenty twenty one, and this is really incredible. Today, however,
the permanent foreign population has gone up immensely and obviously that's led to more animosities.
What I argue in the piece is that and this is similarly the case
if you look at Morocco for instance, or Tunisia and Europe. If you
want a country like Mexico to really clamp down on its northern border, which
are actually currently doing border crossings have gone down a ton. It's kind of
a half measure, or I'll go into a sect. But if you want
Mexico to do something like this, you basically have to pay them number one
to de poor people, and you have to you know, come to the
negotiating table and say, hey, look, please do this for us and
we'll do X for you. This is just you know, normal foreign policy.
And that's why the relationship with Trump and the work. Both of them
are transactional leaders, so you know, they came to the negotiating table and
Trump, to be fair, it did strong arm Mexico with tariffs and the
like. But on the other hand, Mexico got a lot of what it
wanted. For instance, in the USMCA and a lot of its energy priorities.
It's something I think is currently now the case with Biden. They did.
Biden is a lot more critical of you know, norms and human rights
and stuff like that in Mexico has a sketchy track record on some of those
items. Is something that you know, a nationalist like OMLO really resents.
So really basically like any other country, it's there's this view that, oh,
you know, Mexico, they're you know, beneath us, they need
to do what they what we say, well, they have a lot of
leverage. Actually they can. What what they do on their border does have
the ability to impact immigration. Seriously, can I ask you something about the
transactional nature of OMLO and Trump is obviously such a good counterpoint on not counterpoint
counterpart on that. I'm curious what you make of the let's say, intense
rumors that's one way to put it about almost connections with Sinaloa. And I
asked that because I always like the calculus for Amelo to not crack down or
to you know, he's he's fought with the United States over embedding US law
enforcement in cartels like DEA informants and he doesn't like that stuff. He's pushed
back on it sees it as sort of overreaching from a leftist perspective of the
overreaching of Mexico's sovereignty or the undermining of Mexico's sovereignty. It seems to me
there would be incentive for a populist Mexican politician, both economically and in terms
of nationalism, to cut down on some of this cartalic to be open to
remain in Mexico, open to a deal and remain in Mexico, and maybe
he would be in a future Trump administration. But to have a crackdown in
what we see is obviously the opposite of that. What I said probably sounds
naive to people in Mexico because they're like, it's so much more complicated.
Our economy is now completely intertwined with this. What do you make of that?
Though it's a it's a complicated issue in that, you know, AMLA
has promoted this policy that's been made fun of called hugs not bullets, And
the funny thing is that with that actually refers to and actually you look at
poles in Mexico, a lot of Mexicans support the policy that doesn't actually mean
they support the overall policy towards security. Security is a chief criticism that average
Mexicans in the opposition have towards the current government, which has been really bad.
Don't don't don't get me wrong, there's really nothing to do there.
But that's what with the policy as such of hugs not bullets means is investing
in, you know, local communities with the idea of trying to deter people
from going into crime. It's dubious that that has actually been the case.
It's led to better living standards for Mexicans and in terms of wages, but
yeah, crime is still a serious problem. According to government figures, has
been a slow light reduction, but there are other people that dispute because there's
still a lot of disappearances, whether or not homicides of a state have been
essentially stagnant. That said, what's funny is that you look at progressive critiques
of Homlow and what you'll see a lot is this critique over militarization that actually
he's empowered the military, he created the National Guard. The funny thing is
that the National Guard there they've been deployed a lot more than in past governments,
and the military has been deployed a lot more to fight crime, but
they've made less arrests and seizures of drugs, so it's kind of something hard
to part. There's still a lot of violence, and it's not to say
that security forces are completely you know, sitting on their hands, but the
strategy has changed. What the current government thinks is that if they instead of
confronting them head on, try to go for a alternative means just trying to
stop violence as opposed to foment it, it's a better strategy. You know,
you can critique that as you wish. It is true, however,
that the current violence that we see in Mexico really started because of militarization.
In two thousand and seven, Fittie picandern in concert you know, with the
DEA and US intelligence agencies were really happy about this, declared a war on
the cartels and really brought out the military to fight them head on. This
led to an explosion of violence. Homicides like quadrupled and have stayed stagnant ever
since. That's something that on loop and left us in Mexico point two all
the time. They're right, it's just well, things haven't gotten any better.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, and take us now on
this tour of Latinum America because there's some really important developments. You know,
a lot of people merely got a lot of coverage in Argentina, obviously,
and the left is especially focused on Brazil, although the right has been fairly
focused on Brazil more than more than usual over the sort of course of the
Bolsonara reign and now with the Brazil files from Michael Schallenberger and all of that.
But I'm curious, maybe let's start in the DR will work our way
south, because you just had a really good piece on what's going on in
the Dominican Republic and if people aren't cued into the way that the DR has
had to handle the crisis in Haiti and literally going back hundreds of years,
it's like an incredibly fascinating story. But that plays into what you were writing
about. So could you just maybe give us a bit of insight based on
the piece that you wrote here. Yeah, that's a topic for a whole
other article. Actually, the editor is a contract. I had more written,
but they said that I would really be more warranted a whole piece for
the topic. There's a huge you know, I mean funny. Yeah,
a lot of people don't know Haiti invaded the Dominican Republic, not during the
nineteenth century. Uh In Haiti. For a time, there was some signs
that we could have ended up being at least similar to the DR in terms
of development. Up until nineteen sixty the two countries had similar rates of per
capita GDP, stuff like that, poverty. What happened was the Dominican Republic
really tip off, and Haiti hasn't remained more or less stagnant. There's a
lot of incredible story, by the way, like this this moment, as
with Haiti's entire history, but you had this moment of like black colonialism.
Yeah, yeah, exacting the French into the d I mean it was just
incredible. Yeah, it's I mean, it's a fascinating country with a tragic
history. I mean, you know, the first black republic when independence as
a slave revolt and has just been destroyed by the US and France. Is
not to say that this is a good conversation for us to have too as
to how much we can or should blame the US for different problems, not
just in Latin America but in other countries. A lot of leftists like to
say, oh, it's sold the US, blah blah blah blah. The
US isn't a really bad things, don't get me wrong, but when you
take it to a point where you just remove agency from local actors, that's
also not helpful. And I think conservatives should push back on that though.
They should recognize you a lot of the history in the region. And sorry
for the my little interruption there. I just you know, when you dive
into this Spanish and the French in this in this particular area, it's in
incredible history. And you know the situation between Haiti and the d R right
now, this is where interrupted you. You're going on, this is still
to some extent informed by it, like the literal wall between two of them.
Yeah yeah, I mean the current government is building an actual Trump style
border wall with Haiti, and you know the morality of this, it's really
messed up. But it's a lose lose situation. Haiti is a failed state.
I don't blame anyone who tries to leave the country is completely controlled by
gangs. That said, you know, you look at both the DR and
Haiti, both of them have similar populations around ten million. There are poles
that say that eighty four percent of Haitians would leave if they could. If
you do, if the DR had the same policy as Colombia has had with
Venezuela, the DR would just collapse. I mean, they already have a
million Haitians living in the DR. And there's a long history of persecution and
racism against Haitians in the DR, which is funny because most Dominicans are very
dark skinned. And yeah, like ten years ago, the Supreme Court retroactively
took away citizenship from a lot of Dominicans of Haitian descent. That was a
horrific decision. The aUI and I are the current president, last year deported
almost two hundred thousand Haitian migrants. But yeah, at the same time,
as I said, there's only so much one country can take, and it
might be a richer country by comparison, but this leads to negative outcomes if
you just let in too many people, It suppresses a wager, it leads
to concerns from citizens over crime. Rightfully, so it's a terrible, yeah
situation. And while we're on this topic of root causes, as the administration,
Kamala Harris I would say and actually you and I were direct messaging a
bet on Twitter or x or whatever about a conversation that my colleague at Breaking
Points, ra Angrim, and I had with Beto o'rouric. Good talk,
good tar. Recommend everyone check it out. Thank you, thank you.
It was. I was very flattered to hear that you enjoyed it because you
have, you know, such an insight here. And I'm just curious about
when we're talking we go further south down to Colombia and Ecuador and some of
these the way that some of these countries are grappling with a lot of actually
a lot of Americans, I think don't realize that the lack of stability in
these countries is now caused by empowering of cartels, that Mexico Sinaloa has presence
in Ecuador, that you know, there's huge, huge influence of that instability.
That the open border de facto open border in the United States. Every
single person I saw a video of Bill Malugin yesterday asking what like Syrian or
Jordanian migrants, you know, if they paid, they said ten thousand dollars
a person. So ten thousand dollars is not Trump change. And every single
person that is crossing the border has paid that every single day for the most
part. So that's huge, huge amounts of money going to these now industrial
organizations that are completely wreaking havoc in countries from Columbia, Ecuador to everywhere basically
under us. You know, people in Costa Rica are now having issues with
this, you know that's creeping in there. So tell us a little bit
about maybe Colombia specifically, and then maybe we can move on to Ecuador,
maybe it maybe it makes sense to mention both, just depending on what you
want to do here, but maybe tell us about how these crises, the
confluence of drugs and violence are le changing politics in places like Colombia. Yeah,
it's Colombia is interesting because there's currently a coca crash, although I should
check on whether the price is recovered. Between twenty twenty two and twenty twenty
three, the price of coca, the raw ingredient, the raw crop used
to make cocaine, limitted by as much as like fifty percent, and there
were a lot of there was a lot of speculation as to whether maybe it
was over overproduction of cocaine. During the pandemic. You know, borders were
closed and so traffickers just overproduced and now they have this supply that they that
has brought down the price of raw coca. On the other hand, there's
a lot more consumption of synthetic drugs here in the US. What's happened,
and this is why Ecuador has spiraled out of control. There's a lot more
interest from traffickers to send their product to europe Asian markets, and so Ecuador
has become a really really appealing country for traffickers. It's kind of a you
see a kind of proxy war where Mexico's two biggest cartels, Sinaloa and CJ
ANDNG kind of have sponsored the the Ecuadorian gangs Tornado has sent others which takes
sides and then you know, move all over the place between their various patrens.
The Albanian mafia is really involved in Ecuador. There's so many illicit economies
to gold, illicit gold mining, human trafficking, and all these various different
armed, armed and criminal groups have their hands all over this and Colombia because
the cocaine trade has kind of taken a hit, which isn't to say that
they're still not exporting a lot of cocaine. A lot of armed groups have
moved into other economies like illegal mining and extortion. So it's it's you know,
it's kind of this balloon effect. And you would see this actually during
the two thousands, for instance, that Columbia managed to reduce a lot of
its cocaine production. What happened was it then went up and Peruin and Bolivia.
So you just kind of push one side and then on the other comes
out another end. It's a really complicated issue. I mean, all the
consumption in the US and in Europe. I mean, yeah, so long
as I'm going to sound like a libertarian here, it's not to say I
am a libertarian or agree with them, it's just the reality. But so
long as there's that demand, the supply will always try to match it.
So it's just an endless rat race. And we've seen that, you know,
proposals like decriminalizing drugs, it's not necessarily a good solution, especially if
you tried and the horrendous way that Oregon did it, where they just said,
hey, guys, just shoot up on the streets, and you know,
we said we'd supply treatment that doesn't work. I know, this comes
as a major surprise to everyone that the the Oregonian drug policy has been a
colossal failure. But that's a great point. I'm also curious, actually,
how or why it is that you don't have Latin American leaders begging Joe Biden
and the United States to close their damp borders. Is it because of cartel
influence in politics? Is it because remittances? Because they want to keep getting
aid? You know, I looked up when we were talking to Betto,
actually he mentioned something about Guatemala, and I looked at like while we were
talking and looked up the amount of annual aid that we give to Guatemala's an
obscene amount of money over decades. Just It's absolutely true that what we did
in the fifties with our beds was horrific and had a ripple effect for decades.
But for the last several decades we have been pouring money into the Guatemalan
economy. It's not as though America has just left Guatemala behind to fend for
itself. I mean, the amount of money that we end back there is
incredible. So I'm just curious. Again, it always a brave Latin American
leader. You don't even really see this from Bucele, but a brave Latin
American leader you'd think would have some clear mindedness on this. But again,
maybe that sounds naive from the perspective of an American conservative. Yeah, I
mean, like even for Bouquele, the thing is, a country like El
Salvador is still very dependent on remittances, and actually the number of Salvadorans processing
the border has gone down, but it's still among one of the largest groups.
The largest groups, heah are in equal measure that the Northern Triangle,
Hondura, s Guatemala, El Salvador, then Venezuelan's Cubans, Nicaraguans, Haitians,
of the millions of people that come here every year. But yeah,
I mean a lot of these countries they're so dependent on what uh immigrants in
here in the US send to their families. Closing the border could very negatively
impact them. You know a lot of conservatives will say that that actually will
give them reason to you know, to uh, you know, develop their
own countries and stuff like that. It's it's complicated. I'm I'm very sympathetic
actually to I think it's infuriating whenever the Biden administration talks about root causes a
lot of progressives go on and on and on about the stuff like Beto,
but I you know, what does it mean when they talk about, oh,
root causes, let's invest in this. What are they invest in?
They invest in you know, microcredit startups. Most small businesses fail and like
all these NGOs that are just pocketing the money to give to their millionaire president.
I mean, yeah, I talked about this in that Amlo Trump piece.
Omlo talks about you know, he says he wants development in the Northern
Triangle as well, But what's actually development that's useful? Infrastructure, you know,
commitments to labor, manufacturing jobs, that's the kind of stuff we need
to see that that's where age should really be oriented. And in that piece
I brought up the Alliance for Progress, the Kennedy administration's ten year plan in
Latin America. Really good effort, I think, really should be evaluated.
But the interest of the Alliance for Progress was deterring communism by promoting development,
labor, manufacturing, and infrastructure. Those are things that actually would make a
difference, and we would do well from targeting more of our aid to things
that actually would make a difference. In my opinion. What do you make
of biden flirtation with softening sanctions in Cuba, and obviously it's relevant to other
Latin American countries. I like to tell a story when my colleague John Davidson
and I were in I think There's on a Moros. We were talking to
a young Cuban migrant who was said out of absolutely nowhere, and we had
like a half an hour conversation with this kid. He was fascinating in a
horrible story. He'd paid like eleven thousand dollars and gotten turned back from the
border twice and ended up texting John in the middle of the night because he
was worried that the cartels had followed him across the river. He tried to
sneak across and was hiding in the bushes literally and trying to get in touch
with the American border patrol. Who could you know, fend off cartels?
Something like that was the logic. But he, in the middle of the
conversation just turned right to the camera that I was holding and said, Cubans
love the blockade. We Cubans loved the blockade, And in my head I
just thought, you know, eat your heart out right. I grew like
I'm shore, I need this clip first thing when I get back. What
do you make Definitely speaking about I love the interview you guys did with it,
John Davidson, I listened to some of the podcasts in a new book.
Very interesting action. Thanks. Yeah, yeah, we got an interesting
feedback on that segment. John was fantastic. But yeah, so tell us
about the role that sanctions are playing in some of these economic challenges. Well,
one thing I'll say for listeners. In Spanish, the embargo is referred
to as broke. So that's why the Cuban said blockade that we we you
know, referred to as an embardo, So that's what he meant. Translation.
Yeah, I actually have a a perspective. I think not many people
on the right or the left have. I think the Biden administration's approach towards
Venezuela has been a disaster, horrific, no redeeming qualities. Honestly, I
actually liked the spirit of the Barbados agreement, you know, I mean generally
I'm a critic of sanctions policy. I don't think that it does really any
good for anyone, neither of us. It's just a it's just virtual signaling
in my opinion, including with the North Korea ron Russia. You know,
if anything is helped Russia. But you know, I mean, once you
already have these sanctions in place, you actually have some leverage. But the
thing is, you know, if you're going to remove them or give some
sort of relief, you have to get something back in return. And the
weakness of the Biden administration has been I mean, it's completely unexcusable. The
Maduro completely has thrown them for a loop. I don't understand what they're thinking.
Was actually Juan Go and Sagres, who was Biden's advisor for Latin America,
resigned recently. I think very likely over the Venezuela policy. Most likely
what they were going for was just the lower oil oil prices, which is
funny because they just put sanctions back on. They should have put sanctions or
threatened to put sanctions bank on as soon as they were threatening Venezuela was threatening
to invade Guyana and disqualified a lot of these these candidates. What were they
doing I actually forgot about and it was a major story. That was one
of the times that Latin American music really crept into the American media. The
drama over the potential Guyana invasion. That was really something. Yeah, I
mean just completely unexplicable. I can't justify anything that they've done. Really.
The funny thing is that what I've said is that the Barbados agreement probably would
have been a lot more useful under a republican administration. The thing is a
republican administration but also never broke an agreement like that. For listeners that aren't
familiar, the idea behind it was that in exchange for reducing some sanctions,
Venezuela would agree to, you know, have international advisors lift bands on opposition
candidates, chiefly Mari Equitina, my child, who's the leader of the opposition,
and would agree to receive US deportees. Now, let's look at the
results. They're all terrible. They removed sanctions for a few months and that
led to increased oil production in Venezuela. They didn't lift the ban on my
child and actually disqualified other up ed leading opposition candidates, and they agreed to
accept deportees. And you know how many people the Bidenn administration deported in the
first three months. It's a laughable number, like ten thousand. So nothing
that was you know, I'm a realist. Nothing that was in the national
interest came of this agreement. On the other hand, I actually agree with
getting rid of sanctions entirely on Cuba. I mean, I think it would
be desirable to, you know, do something similar. You know, if
we're going to do this, you have to do something for us, take
our deporties whatever. They shouldn't just unilaterally left sanctions. But it's clear to
me that beyond even the embargo, what Trump did during the last days of
his presidency, and I've been meeting to write this, he put Cuba on
the list of state sponsors of terrorism, which is a ridiculous designation. There's
no basis for it. It's true in the past Cuba did support you know,
Marxist Gorilla is all over Latin America, and that's why they were originally
put on the list. Don't they still have, like Chinese and Russian there's
some although I don't know how reliable that reporting is. It could be you
know, CIA planted information, but there's like Russian bases in Cuba or sharing
agreements same with like Veniet. Yeah, yeah, that's that's absolutely true,
But that doesn't mean that doesn't make them a state sponsor of terrorists. I
mean, they're on there alongside you know, you know, like Iran,
and it just doesn't make any sense. It's not to say that there are
a friend. But what's happened is that that is completely killed Cuba's tourism industry.
And you can think of that as being which is what the country did
mostly dependent on. Nowadays, you can think of that as a win to
say, oh, you know, this has created a lot of animosity towards
the regime. It's true, the conditions on the island have gone way worse.
Even you know, in a few years ago they were already bad.
They've gotten way worse. But what's the result of this. It's led to
hundreds of thousands of Cubans coming here. If you're a border hug you should
not be in favor of sanctions towards Cuba. The problem with putting them on
that list is that a lot of foreign companies cannot do business with Cuba because
they're a state sponsor of terrorism, and a lot of European otherwise tourists have
been deterred from coming because they actually have to report at the US embassy in
France. Let's say let's say that they're going to travel to Cuba. If
they ever then want to travel against the US, it's completely insane. Obviously,
that's going to deter tours from going. And what you see in the
dr and all over the rest of the Caribbean is that after the pandemic towards
massword, the only country where that was not the case is in Cuba.
I don't think that that's a coincidence. What my neighbors will say is that,
oh, you know, it's just communism and the regime, and no
one wants to go to That's nonsense. On the contrary, a lot of
Europeans like going there because it's a communist country. I'm missing. These are
your Cuban neighbors in the main area in Venezuelan. Yeah, yeah, okay,
But of course they think that because of the rampant disinformation on the radio
stations that the Biden administration is so concerned with, the Biden campaign is so
concerned seeing that the blaming all of the Cuban support for Trump and the Venezuelan
support for Trump on coordinated disinformation. Yeah yeah, I mean, it's just
I think that why Biden hasn'tagued what's funny is that in concrete terms, it's
sure, it's true that what's happened now is because of what Trump did days
before leaving office, but you know it's been enforced under Biden. In practical
terms, the Biden administration is actually inflicted way more damage and been way more
aggressive against the Cuban regime than Trump ever was. So that's just kind of
and then you'd think that, considering what they've done with Venezuela, they tried
something similar. I think that they haven't because they genuinely think they can win
Florida or at least have a chance here. I don't think they do,
but I guess that's your thinking. Well, just as we're kind of winning
this tank, it's been absolutely fascinating, could you maybe address the broad point
that I've seen some libertarian, kind of Coke affiliated people make. But also
that is the central argument on the left that you know, let's say they're
in principle in favor of relatively open borders. You know, they might say,
we need, you know, some border patrol stations on the border,
but you know, generally people should have freedom of movement, is how they
put it. Why is that immoral? In the environment that we're working in
right now, meaning why is it, For example, if let's say the
Senate Border bill were enacted and Biden took the executive privilege to make the exceptions
that were built into it and continued to kind of allow all of these asylum
claims to be made without detention, without remain in Mexico, why is that?
Why is the result of that necessarily going to be more human trafficking,
more suffering, rather than a safer, more orderly process with more funded asylum
judges, more border patrol. This is a leading question. You may disagree
with where it's going, but I think we're on the same page generally.
Why is it that having you know, more asylum judges, more orderly process
is still at this point in time at least going to result in more trafficking.
Basically, we were and you're saying that having more judges would would lead
to more trafficking. Well, more judges like paired as part of this package,
this policy package, not specifically that bill, but basically what they're all
saying is that we can have an orderly process at this moment in time where
you know, we're still allowing CVP one and mass asylum without detention and all
of that. All we have to do is put more money into it.
Put more money into the system. Why is that still going to be the
best way to put This is probably a pull factor. How do we conceive
the sort of pull versus push right now? And what implications for policy does
that have? Yeah, you know, it's just a band aid, And
I'll be honest, I think it's still preferable to the status quote. Why
because this you mean like the border bill tally? Oh interesting, Okay,
cool. I actually do think that the border bill is preferable to the status
quo because the status quo is just the worst of all worlds. The problem
is that, yeah, sure, you still would have people being let out
into the country without attention, no change to asylum policy more broadly, but
because there's not enough judges and there's not enough infrastructure, and is sure,
I mean it could be the case that things wouldn't change that much. And
I can say this firsthand. These asylum cases take years to go through the
courts. They're completely understaffed and overcrowded in most cases, you know, one,
two, three years for an asily to even start. They have their
first hearing. And when I say assilly, that's being generous because yeah,
it's ninety percent of those claiming asylum do not have or more do not have
a legitimate claim to asylum. So I do think that adding more judges and
increasing funding for border patrol would be helpful. That said, yeah, it's
it doesn't change the fundamental underlying conditions and the incentives we're giving people to come
here. That needs to be completely changing. We need to bring back remain
in Mexico. We need to massively increase deportations. Uh, and we we
have to stop letting out millions of people into the country difficult, just completely
unlooked after. Yeah, and you know, my perspective on this is that
it's another it's almost like a sort of what's the best way to put this,
what's the what's the word that the left always uses an American It's it's
hegemony dressed up as social justice. I guess it's you know, at the
expense of some of these other countries. It's almost as to your point on
the morality of it. I mean, and yeah, regardless of what happens
to the marale I mean, what progressives would say is that, you know,
it's a moral to the poor people. It's a moral to be really
restrictive on immigration. And honestly, they're not entirely incorrect. The problem is
that, you know, there's shades are great here, what's more, and
moral letting millions of people into your country, a lot of them completely unaccounted
for. You don't even know who they are. And you know, I'm
sure you've seen how the number of Chinese people coming here is also skyrocketed.
These could be spies, We have no idea. Yeah, I've seen.
Also the amount of terrorists that come up has gone up tenfold since the Trump
administration. It's still a small number overall, but this is concerning and that's
just who's been caught. Yeah, exactly, exactly, you know it just
you're doing nothing about these human smuggling networks and criminals that take advantage of migrants.
It's an escape valve for a lot of these terrible regimes that if you're
a critic of the regime, oh here, just get out of here,
and now you're no longer a problem for us. There's a lot of different
ways to parse this. When you know, for progressives, it's all about
empathy and it's funny because they just have no respect for themselves. Honestly,
this is these sorts of policies or things that just end up hurting leftist parties.
We talked about this that Ryan and Crystal love to cite this infuriating study
on leftist parties in Europe with it. Oh, they took a hard line
in immigration and then they lost. No, they didn't know, both rhetorically
and in practice. The problem is precisely that that they didn't. And actually
you look at Denmark for instance, as a popular leftist social democratic government,
it's really hard on immigration. Yeah, and they've held they actually managed to
leave the popularity of the far right because they took a hard line on immigration.
Democrats used to understand this, but Barbara Jordan, the Jordan Commission,
and used to you know, I think both rhetoric and action matters. It's
just things have gotten so under control. Frankly, the numbers overall, I
think under Trump weren't that much better relative to previous presidents. You know,
Obama famously deported way more people than Trump ever did in just one of his
terms. But relative to now, yeah, Trump is comparatively, you know,
way better on immigration. So it's a really sad state of affairs.
Yeah, well, before we wrap your one, could you is there anything
that we haven't covered that you think people shouldn't know that maybe doesn't get enough
attention, or that again we haven't even covered it here about Latin American politics,
about migration crisis that we haven't covered that you again, that you think
people should be aware of. I think that's too big of a question.
I could come up with a lot of things, but maybe broad themes.
Yeah, there's a lot of difference between the various governments in the region,
both on the right and on the left. And there is some like fun
maps you can look on Twitter that distinguished between a conservative left as Soa calls
it a more progressive left, and then you know the tyrannical guys like Maduro
and Ortego. Funnily enough, they're actually very socially conservative, you know,
they're just horrible their tears. But on the right too, you also see
a lot of differences. Is the more kind of traditional businessman right in general,
on the Latin American right, you see the leaders tend to be businessmen,
and then you have more kind of Christian nationalists and religious right figures like
Bolsonaro, like John Matta and Guatemala. It's well, one of the things
that I think is never helpful is just painting with a broad brush that all
of these governments are the same in one way or the other, whether they're
on the right or on the left. That's actually something JP sort of insinuated
that I took beef with in the podcast with you, and you see this
on the left too, that that say, you know, all these horrible
US backed they always say that US backed conservative governments are doing extra y.
I mean, guys, most of these governments were elected fairly by their voters,
so there's there's reasons for that. You know. That's an interesting point
because a lot of people would look at Latin America and say, well,
these are all you know, there's so many failed states, and it can't
it can't be real democracy. But it really is, yeah, I mean
in just the basic sense. And you know, people talk about the quality
of democracy. There's a lot of violence, electoral violence too. On paper,
you know, most of these governments have elections and they're largely free and
fair, except for you and the Troy Co terror but in most cases,
yeah, the will of the people does always went over and you see that.
You see that because people react against sky high levels of violence. Electing
someone like Bouquela. Well, it's funny he didn't actually get elected originally on
an anti crime platform, but that that's definitely a source of his popularity.
Now, on the other hand, a lot of the leftists that got elected,
like Chavez originally and let's say Petro and Columbia, they get elected because
of decades long failures from the right. It's that simple, Argentina, Well,
I guess, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's all right.
Well, thank you so much for joining us. What's your Twitter handle
so people can make sure to go follow you. Oh it's at rohst r
one D. Okay, at rohusts r one D. Make sure to follow
one's work in compact. You're right for the Telegraph. It's just great stuff.
I can't recommend it enough, So thank you again for joining us.
You've been listening to another edition of The Federalist or radio hour. I'm em
Elegrisianski, culture editor here at the Federalist. We'll be back soon with more.
Until then, be lovers of freedom and anxious for the fray.